Classroom Edu-Tech and Textbooks: A Parent Alert
Parents, make your voices heard because schools have embraced tech big-time, with a lot of reform and financial encouragement from politicians, tech folks, and textbook publishers, too. Take the $8.5 billion textbook giant Pearson’s recent shift from print to digital,...
A School-Wise Update: Distressed Students’ Impact on Teachers
As reported by Sarah Schwartz in her piece, “Students in Distress Strain Teachers’ Skills,” Education Week surveyed teachers regarding the importance of and their ability to teach social-emotional skills—build strong relationships, make smart decisions, manage...
A School-Wise Check on the State of History and Civics Education in 2019
Public trust in government is reportedly at an all-time low, and we’re more polarized than ever on everything from the climate and immigration to guns and healthcare. Even the Electoral College is under fire, and criticism of the Supreme Court at times runs high....
Back-to-School Shopping, Educators Working Two Jobs, and the Shrinking Teacher Pipeline
Summer is barely half over, but already back-to-school sales are flooding the marketplace, with store shelves brimming with school-related goodies, everything from binders and notebook paper to pens, pencils, and backpacks. Indeed, Deloitte projects that overall K-12...
Montana’s Private School Choice Voucher Program Heads to the Supreme Court
Private school vouchers hark back to President George W. Bush and his signing of the D.C. School Choice Incentive Act of 2003, thus creating the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. As a result, numerous low-income families received funding to make up for the cost of...
The CDC and the Importance of Strong Home & School Connects
A bit predictable, but, nevertheless… Some time ago, reports Lisa Rapaport, the CDC asked 14,800 young people to complete health surveys; they were, on average, 15 years old. The highest possible “connectedness” score for their relationships at school was 30; it was...
School-Wise Quotes: The Latest on Standardized Testing
“For most teachers and students, testing remains the educational equivalent of a root canal. It’s endured and then recalled with relief. It’s not something deeply integrated with teaching that reinforces long-term educational goals like developing students’ ability to...
A School-Wise Heads-Up: Regular Ed Teachers’ Lack of Special Needs Training
The National Center for Learning Disabilities and Understood.org teamed up and surveyed 1,350 teachers and also put together focus groups, looked at teacher certification requirements, and analyzed how best to teach students with mild to moderate disabilities. These...
A School-Wise Heads-Up: Soft Skills in Demand, Perfect ACT Scores, the “Disadvantage
Like it or not... Despite the push for tech skills in our K-12 schools, what’s really in demand by employers are so-called soft skills. These include oral and written communication skills, attention to detail, problem-solving, empathy and organization. The number of...
Quoting Author Daniel Pink, Tech Investor Robert F. Smith, and Purdue President Mitch Daniels
Best-selling author Daniel Pink: “Want better academic performance from your students?” Give ‘em frickin’ recess!” Pledging $40 million, billionaire tech investor and philanthropist Robert F. Smith to the Morehouse College graduating class of 2019: “My family is going...
Memorial Day and the Poppy Lady
Honor them well… We’re within days of the Memorial Day weekend—and the unofficial start of summer—with most of us hoping to lay back, relax, and possibly fire up the grill, or maybe even head to the shore or the mountains. Three whole days away from alarm clocks,...
Question: Does a School Principal Have the Right to Enforce a Parent Dress Code?
One would think that a parent walking into their child’s school would want to make a good impression and dress accordingly. We are, after all, judged, at least in part, on appearance and first impressions count. Well, some folks apparently don't see it that way, thus...
Teacher Appreciation Week, 2019
Once a year and not nearly often enough, we take note of our teachers during Teacher Appreciation Week. Along with your support, be sure to thank all those educators who have taught you well and whose lessons on living have made all the difference... "A teacher...
Ed Tech: A Billions Academic Game Changer?
The Education Week Research Center put education technology’s effectiveness to the test and found that, when it comes to teachers’ views about related innovations: Less than 33% said they’ve changed their beliefs about what schools should look like. Less than 50% said...
Randi Weingarten: De-professionalization’s Impact on the State of Teaching, the Art of Teaching
Speaking at the National Press Club last week, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, spoke her mind in no uncertain terms about the plight of teachers. Noting the profession’s “ongoing and alarming crisis,” she targeted two major...
How States Rate Schools Using Standardized Tests under ESSA
You’ve just gotta love the lofty titles of Obama’s Every Student Succeeds Act, (ESSA), and its predecessor, Bush’s 2001’s No Child Left Behind, or NCLB---as if a 100% success rate were ever doable. No stragglers, no one bringing up the rear, no one back there at all....
The Teaching Life: Diminished Returns and the Temptation to Walk Away
Washington Post’s Andrew Van Dam reports that, back in the early 1990s, teachers and support staff enjoyed above-average paychecks in 26 out of the 42 states in the Labor Department’s database. By 2017, only one state, Rhode Island, could make that boast, while the...
Tech Presides with Impersonal “Personalized Learning”
Ed tech continues to change schooling, with devices and online programs nowadays taking front and center, not the teacher. That is most certainly the case with personalized learning, the latest education reform buzzword. Although touted by proponents as learning’s...
Big Brother Alive and Well in Our Classrooms
Be advised: Microsoft’s Bill Gates is now out there calling textbooks "obsolete" and predicting their imminent death. Yes, this despite the fact that ongoing studies keep finding/proving that students prefer reading the paper variety. Moreover, when coming across...
For the Love of Laptops and Note-taking—or Not!
So, are laptops in the classroom “a lifeline” or a distraction that also negatively affects note-taking and learning? That’s a question on many researchers’ minds… In a 2014 study, researchers Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer concluded that “,,, Even if laptops are...
